Jean Cocteau Quotes

An artist cannot speak about his art anymore than a plant can discuss horticulture.

I am burning myself up and will always do so.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

[C]ourageous film-makers, who take no account of success, prove that cinematography is a medium for realism and lyricism, and that everything depends on the angle from which one observes the spectacle of life — the angle from which they constrain us to share a singular vision of things and emphasize the everyday miracle that lies within them.

« Un beau livre, c'est celui qui sème à foison les points d'interrogation. »

Opium resembles religion insofar as a magician resembles Jesus.

I grant you that, if you'll admit, as I do, that we are pawns of an unknown force that lives within us that dictates our actions and compels us to speak this language.

See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand … We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.

I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love

Croyez-vous qu'on ne puisse prendre le mal d'amour en touchant l'or et la pourpre? Les privilèges dont vous parlez ne sont-ils pas la substance même de Jocaste et si étroitement enchevêtrés à ses organes qu'on ne puisse les désunir. De toute éternité nous appartenions l'un à l'autre. Son ventre cache les plis et replis d'un manteau de pourpre beaucoup plus royal que celui qu'elle agrafe sur ses épaules. Je l'aime, je l'adore, Tirésias, auprès d'elle il me semble que j'occupe enfin ma vraie place;

Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.

Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.